


A living hell that only the high can chase away

by shadow343434



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Healing, Klaus receives the love he deserves from his family, M/M, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-11-09 06:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17996465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow343434/pseuds/shadow343434
Summary: A time travel fix-it where Klaus finally receives the protection and love of his siblings that was mostly missing in his adult life.





	1. Chapter 1- The endless screams

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fan fiction written on this site, and the first written for The Umbrella Academy. I absolutely loved the show and I hope in the next season we can see more of Klaus getting help from his siblings.   
> Constructive criticism is welcomed, but please go easy on me as i know I am not the best writer but I am trying to at least publish an entertaining story.

Klaus wished he was back in his future dead along with the rest of the world destroyed by Vanya. It would be better than being back here. He didn’t know if he had been in here for an hour or five. All he knew was he wanted it over after the first minute.

It was so dark and cold. The chill seeped into his bones as he curled into himself harder to save some semblance of body heat. A stench of rotting corpses permeated the air so thickly he could taste it on his tongue. He shivered uncontrollably. He knew it wasn’t caused entirely by the cold, but by the fear making his heart beat loudly in his ears. It was the only thing that he could focus on; the dizziness in his head as the blood rushed to his skull.

Until the voices started.

They were so loud. An echoing crescendo growing louder and louder as the night dragged on. Eventually he started to see the glowing blue shapes of the phantoms around him, growing in detail as the voices increased in numbers and pitch.

“Help me. Please for the love of god please help me.” They all screamed. But this has nothing to do with god. God didn’t care. God didn’t even like him. There would be no god to help any of them. Only there screams to haunt him for the rest of his life.

He screwed his eyes tighter and clamped his hands tighter against his ears as if it was possible to block out the visions and sounds around him. He wanted them to go away. Klaus would have preferred the suffocating dampness and darkness over this hell.

His hands and eyelids could not block out the ghosts no matter how tightly he squeezed. They were seared into his mind.

A man in his thirties right in front of him; black marks caused by a noose surrounding his neck. He was lynched by a mob for the murder of his wife in the 1800s. He yelled he didn’t deserve to die. It was the bitch’s fault for cheating on him.

A woman no older than forty, dressed into a dirtied yellow nightie. Her light hair greasy and thinning on the patch of her head that was not torn off. Her scalp ripped off by a psychopathic serial killer. Her body left in a sewer never to be discovered, even when all the others has been found and properly buried.

Two girls no older than five in the far corner; clothes tattered and bruises marring their skin. Victims of a violent rape. They all screamed their stories at him. As if he could help them even when he knew he never could.

So, to drown them out he tried screaming for someone to help him. He screamed for his father to let him out; for his family to come and save him as they saved Vanya from destroying herself along with the world; even for the lady who rescued him from his kidnappers last time.

He knew know one would hear him down here. No one did when he was first made to go through this. No one would be coming to save him now. They probably don’t even know I’m missing he told himself. It was just like back in the motel. No one would even care if he died, they wouldn’t even notice he was missing. _And why would they?_ He thought _No one ever cares about the useless junkie brother._ Not one of his family members came to rescue him. Only that cop lady. _And look where that got her. Shot dead in the middle of a crappy motel._ That almost made him laugh. _What a way to go._

_Dad’s right I’m useless and only a disappointment. Why should my family come? I will only be a burden. I can’t even deal with a few ghosts. What a joke._


	2. Chapter 2- Descent into madness

**Chapter 2- Descent into madness**

 

Hours continued to pass. The next day could have come and gone and he would have never known. Not an ounce of natural light penetrated the airtight mausoleum. The only available light source came from the glowing blue forms of the phantoms around him.

The ghosts haunting him here were either buried in this crypt or brought here by him.

Ghosts would attach themselves to him in the streets once they noticed he could see and hear them. They followed like lost puppies, attaching themselves to him in a last-ditch effort to connect to their lost mortality. They screamed and begged for his help; either to move on or to let their loved ones see them just one last time. They never left him alone no matter how many times he told them he cannot help.

The more time passed by the harder it got for him to breathe. The stench of death was too overpowering. Soon spots of black started to appear in his vision. The only life down here was his shivering body and the moss clinging to stone brickwork. A while ago he thought he even saw Dave in the background. Just as beautiful as the day he first saw him, except for the blood staining the front of his clothes from a pulsating gunshot wound in his chest. Dave seemed to look around in confusion, shuffling about in the background, but just like the time he had with him, the ghost was gone far too soon, making him wonder if it was even there in the first place.

Klaus was going mad down here. Even the ever-present ghost of his brother Ben was gone. He wondered why it took this long to notice his absence. Ben was usually right beside him, either laughing at his eccentricity or look at him with a disapproving stare whenever he popped another pill. He was the only one of his siblings to help him through his worst times.

When he was younger, after the nightmares had started, he used to sleep in either Diego’s or Ben bed. Often stumbling into their rooms in the middle of the night, eyes bloodshot with tears. Diego would just move over and allow Klaus to snuggle up against him without saying a word.

Ben on the other hand tried to get him to talk about what happened, but he always refused to talk. Not about the boy murdered by his own father or even of the old lady who died of cancer but was still trying to get him to say goodbye to her only daughter.

Klaus was close to Diego back then, but not in the same way as he was with Ben. With Ben they were as thick as thieves. Their brotherhood the strongest among their siblings. But with Diego it was different. He enjoyed hanging out with Diego in different ways that always left a strange flutter in his stomach.

When he asked his father about why he felt this around Diego, he gave him a look of great disgust, as if he was a stray, flea bitten dog, and told him to stop spending time with Diego. Not that it ever stopped him. He would sneak out to meet Diego in a hidden corner of the mansion or sneak into his bed.  

However, as they grew older Diego soon got tired of the late-night visits and would lock the door, barring Klaus from entering, and he would stop meeting Klaus in their special spots. Klaus knew Diego started to ignore him because the increasing stress and lack of freedom placed on all of them by their father. Especially due to his status as number 2, always in the shadow of his stronger brother.

Like all of them he wanted his independence and that included isolating himself from Klaus along with the others. So, when Diego stopped letting Klaus come into his room the role of comforter fell to Ben who never left him to suffer alone.

With Ben gone he felt his throat squeeze even tighter as he scanned his eyes rapidly across the room. _Ben couldn’t be gone. He didn’t leave at the motel, so why would he leave now? He couldn’t have left me alone down here? No, no, no, no, no._

Ben was the one person who would never leave him. As kids they would often be seen playing together or talking in Klaus room. They had a mutual hatred of their powers. Klaus for the endless cries of ghosts and Ben for the horrors that lived within him. They wished had the abilities of their siblings, or even a lack of powers like Vanya. Anything over what they were supposedly gifted with, if their father was to be believed.

When Ben died Klaus was heartbroken, especially as it had been brought about by Luther on his father’s orders. For a while after Diego allowed Klaus to bed with him, but it stopped after about a month when Diego left suddenly. When he finally thought something would happen between them.

It was the final straw to his already cracked breaking point.  

When Ben died Klaus turned to pills to drown out the pain of losing the only person who ever cared for him. When Ben’s ghost appeared he was ecstatic, but even though Ben came back he still never gave up the pills. He was too deep into the high created by the drugs and their ability to finally block out the dead and their voices.

It was the appearance of ghostly Ben which caused Klaus to delve into harder drugs. The very notion that he would never be allowed to touch his brother again created a pain in his chest that could only be numbed by the high.

All except Ben, who in his stubborn determination, said to him that he would never leave, even when Klaus was at his lowest point. When the nightmares would cause him insomnia in between the blackouts caused drugs and booze. Ben was the one person who would never leave, even when Klaus screamed at him to leave him alone and let him take his drugs in peace.

But Ben was gone now.

“Ben!” He screamed scrambling to his feet, only to collapse against the gold plaque of a women yelling at him in Russian. “No, come back!” He yelled louder. “You said you wouldn’t leave me. You _promised!”_ He cried out, beating a hand against his chest as if the pain would force his brother to come back.

“Ben! Ben!” He yelled out continuously. He screamed to his voice turned hoarse.

“Whatever I did I’m sorry.” He sobbed into his hands quieting down as his voice grew hoarse. “Please. Please come back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me alone down here.” He whimpered until he fell into unconsciousness out of exhaustion. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the late update. Second year of Uni has been a lot tougher than last year, but i'm on a break now for a couple of weeks and i'll try to type up a lot more chapters. I will try to upload them once a week, just so you have a few chapters coming out even after my break has finished.


	3. Chapter 3- Isolation

When they came back to the past the biggest shock to all of them, besides their young age, was the return of Ben to a corporeal form. It had been over a decade since any of them had seen him before his appearance in the concert hall. The years after Ben passed it was hard for them to believe Klaus could see him. They knew he could see ghosts, but they also knew the drugs prevented him from seeing them, so how could he be seeing Ben.

_Part of their blinding disbelief was born out of jealousy_ , Ben mused. _They don’t like that the biggest screwup in their family was the one person allowed to see me_. Ben thought Klaus was the one sibling who needed to see him as Ben was the only person who provided any sort of support to the traumatized number 4.  

His siblings started to ostracize Klaus more as they grew older. As Klaus was struggling more and more with the visions and nightmares, going deeper into harder drugs as time went on, he needed them more. Instead they ignored him and wrote him off as a useless junkie, not even trying to understand why he was turning to addictive substances. Klaus didn’t have them, so he turned to something that was slowly ruining his body and life. Ben didn’t want to even think about what might have happened to Klaus if he wasn’t there to turn his brother away from his worst acts of desperation and suicidal thoughts.

He thought Diego would be there for Klaus, but he kept getting caught up in his need for independence to worry about Klaus. When Diego left the umbrella academy he did do little things for Klaus, often giving him lifts to places or bailing him out of jail on a few occasions, but he was never truly there for Klaus. Not in the way Klaus needed; He wasn’t there to comfort him after particularly bad nightmares; to touch Klaus when he was feeling disconnected from the world, when the drugs were wearing off and the ghosts became harder to distinguish from the living; He wasn’t there to bring him back from the edge, to show Klaus he was still alive and that the ghosts were not the only thing that bothered with him anymore.

Ben was shaken from his thoughts by a pile of bodies stacking on top of him, all except Vanya who still lay unconscious to the side. Each sibling trying to hug him as close as possible. Klaus was the closest _; it would always be Klaus_. Ben sat up and they all gathered together in a group hug. Probably the first one they ever did. They were all crying, letting out their relief for avoiding the apocalypse and the ones they had lost in the upcoming future.

They stayed like that until they heard a groan coming from behind them. As quick as they came together they split apart. Their eyes puffy and bloodshot, but no longer crying. They all avoided eye contact with each other as they stood up, ignoring and refusing to acknowledge what happened.

The voice groaned again, and they turned around. Vanya was waking up. They all tensed up as she slowly started to wake. Luther moved to the front, arms stretched slightly to his sides, standing in a position to protect them from a possible attack. Ben heard Klaus snort behind him. After what Vanya did to all of them at the concert, he doubted Luther would be able to protect them from her power.

She looked at them before backing up into a bench that stood in the garden they arrived at, folding into herself. The others, besides him and Klaus, started approaching her all at once. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Klaus commented. As always, the others ignored him and continued to approach her.

As they crowded closer to her she started breathing more rapidly and a white glow started to surround her. Clearly, they didn’t know about panic attacks, or else they wouldn’t be trying to surround her. Ben backed away slowly with Klaus. From what he witnessed when Klaus had his attacks, something was about to happen, and it would not be good.

 

Vanya rubbed her head as she sat up. It was pounding and there was a ringing in her right ear, disorientating her. She blearily looked around, before scuffling back as her eyes fell upon the children surrounding her. Strangers she couldn’t recognize. She moved until her back touched one of the benches in the garden. Her eyes rapidly jumped to each of them, before blurring as she started to hyperventilate. She pressed her hands into her eyes, resting them against her knees.

_What have I done?_ Vanya wondered, bringing her knees tighter to her chest. _If the others are not here than what happened to them?_ Her mind was getting scattered as she tried to recall the last few days. In her panic she could not see, could not understand who was surrounding her.

Vanya first recalled the murder of Leonard and Pogo, their betrayal. They were both meant to be someone she could confide in about her siblings, but instead they hurt her, turned her into a murderer of her family.

She could feel shadows closing around her. Demons coming to feed off her weakness and inability to control herself. Surely, they would kill her. _After all, why would somebody like me deserve salvation?_

**“Why should you suffer?”** A voice called within her. The same voice that had talked to her in the prison her father built for her, that her brother locked her in. “ **They were the special ones. They were the ones that your father chose for the academy, while you were tricked into believing you were ordinary. They treated you as an outsider your whole life. Shutting you out of their life just because you didn’t have powers. How many times did you try to join in on training, but they rejected you? Or ignored you? Shutting a door in your face when all you wanted to do was sit with them during their rare free time? They deserved what they got.”** It finished with a touch of venom.

 

As the others grew closer Ben noticed a faint bluish-white light started to surround Vanya, who clamped her hands against her ears. “No, no, no! no!!” She started to scream, louder and louder to drown out the voice. “It’s not true. They were my family!” On the last word the whiteness flew outwards, blowing away the siblings before her. After that Vanya pitched to the right and was still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Sorry there was more about Vanya than Klaus in here, but if you are to focus and analyze one character, the actions of the others will influence them.


End file.
